The primary goal of this site is to provide mature, meaningful discussion about the Vancouver Canucks. However, we all need a break some time so this forum is basically for anything off-topic, off the wall, or to just get something off your chest! This forum is named after poster Creeper, who passed away in July of 2011 and was a long time member of the Canucks message board community.

Was looking at some homicides per 100,000 inhabitants stats and made a graph of it. Highlighted some countries of interest (stay the hell out of Belize!) when I suddenly dropped my chin. WTF? There must be something fundamentally wrong about Greenland. Tucked in between the incredibly safe Scandinavia and nearly as safe Canada and... seriously... WTF?

There has been an on going gang war in Belize, an extension of the disputes in Mexico as the Zeta gang wrestles for control. Not to mention the country just defaulted on its sovereign debt (payment was missed, 30 day grace period expired, but creditors have given an extension of 60 days while restructuring negotiations progress).

In response to the gang war, the government hired many of the gang members to do pretty much nothing except collect a paycheck and stop killing one another. It slowed the murder rate, but the government has run out of money and still owes Canada's Fortis for expropriating the power distribution company from them last year and is also fighting an long running battle with Lord Micheal Ashcroft over the expropriation of the telephone company.

Tellingly for a banana republic, the local king pin for the Zetas owns one of the biggest banana growers in the country and the US government has recently banned all US citizens and companies from doing business with him and his companies. While his bananas go to Europe, his payroll and accounts are all in limbo because all the banks (Atlantic, NovaScotia, CIBC, Barclays, BelizeBank) have US connections somewhere along the way.

The numbers also are enhanced by population size. There are only 300,000 people in the country so a couple of extra murders have a huge effect. This is likely the reason for Greenland's ranking as well.

Palau (pop 21,000), Monaco (36,000) and Iceland (320,000) are all in the top five in lowest homicide rates.But a single murder in Palau would bring them up to 4.8 on this scale, which would be on par with the USA and three times worse than Canada.